Victory: An Island Tale, Volume 2

closer to him. After the lingering kiss he did not relinquish his hold. “To slay, to love—the greatest enterprises of life upon a man! And I have no experience of either. You must forgive me anything that may have appeared to you awkward in my behaviour, inexpressive in my speeches, untimely in my silences.” He moved uneasily, a little disappointed by her attitude, but indulgent to it, and feeling, in this moment of perfect quietness, that in holding her surrendered hand he had found a closer communion than they had ever achieved before. But even then there still lingered in him a sense of incompleteness not altogether overcome—which, it seemed, nothing ever would overcome—the fatal imperfection of all the gifts of life, which makes of them a delusion and a snare. All of a sudden he squeezed her hand angrily. His delicately playful equanimity, the product of kindness and scorn, had perished with the loss of his bitter liberty. “Not murder, you say! I should think not. But when you led me to talk just now, when the name turned up, when you understood that it was of me that these things had been said, you showed a strange emotion. I could see it.” “I was a bit startled,” she said.

“At the baseness of my conduct 2" he asked. “I wouldn't judge you; not for anything.” “Really P" “It would be as if I dared to judge everything that there is.” With her other hand she made a gesture that seemed to embrace in one movement the earth and the heaven. “I wouldn't do such a thing.” Then came a silence, broken at last by Heyst: “I! I do a deadly wrong to my poor Morrison!” he cried. “I, who could not bear to hurt his feelings! I, who respected his very madness! Yes, this madness, the wreck of which you can see lying about the jetty of Diamond Bay. What else could I do? He insisted on regarding me as his saviour; he was always restraining the eternal obligation on the tip of his tongue, till I was burning with shame at his gratitude. What could I do 2 He was going to repay me with this infernal coal, and I had to join him as one joins a child’s game in a nursery. One would no more have thought of humiliating him than one would think of humiliating a child. What's the use of talking of all this Of course, the people here could not understand the truth of our relation to each other. But what business of theirs was it P Kill old Morrison! Well, it is less criminal, less base—I am not saying it is less difficult—to kill a man than to cheat him in that way. You understand that ?”

She nodded slightly, but more than once and with evident conviction. His eyes rested on her, inquisitive, ready for tenderness. “But it was neither one nor the other,” he went on. “Then, why your emotion ? All you confess is that you wouldn't judge me.” She turned upon him her veiled, unseeing grey eyes in which nothing of her wonder could be read. “I said I couldn't,” she whispered. “But you thought that there was no smoke without fire " The playfulness of tone hardly concealed his irritation. “What power there must be in words, only imperfectly heard—for you did not listen with particular care, did you ? What were they P What evil effort of invention drove them into that idiot’s mouth out of his lying throat 2 If you were to try to remember, they would perhaps convince me, too.” “I didn’t listen,” she protested. “What was it to me what they said of anybody ? He was saying that there never were such loving friends to look at as you two; then, when you got all you wanted out of him and got thoroughly tired of him, too, you kicked him out to go home and die.” Indignation, with an undercurrent of some other feeling, rang in these quoted words, uttered in her enchanting voice. She ceased abruptly and lowered her dark lashes, as if mortally weary, sick at heart.
“Of course, why shouldn't you get tired of that or any other—company ? You aren't like any one else, and—and the thought of it made me unhappy suddenly; but indeed, I did not believe anything bad of you. I—” A brusque movement of his arm, flinging her hand away, stopped her short. Heyst had again lost control of himself. He would have shouted, if shouting had been in his character. “No, this earth must be the appointed hatching planet of calumny enough to furnish the whole universe! I feel a disgust at my own person, as if I had tumbled into some filthy hole. Pah! And you —all you can say is that you won't judge me; that you—” She raised her head at this attack, though indeed he had not turned to her. “I don't believe anything bad of you,” she repeated. “I couldn't.” He made a gesture as if to say: “That's sufficient.” In his soul and in his body he experienced a nervous reaction from tenderness. All at once he detested her. But only for a moment. He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites—and escapes.

He jumped up and began to walk to and fro. Presently his hidden fury fell into dust within him, like a crazy structure, leaving behind emptiness, desolation, regret. His resentment was not against the girl, but against life itself—that commonest of snares, in which he felt himself caught, seeing clearly the plot of plots and unconsoled by the lucidity of his mind.

He swerved and, stepping up to her, sank to the ground by her side. Before she could make a movement, or even turn her head his way, he took her in his arms and kissed her lips. He tasted on them the bitterness of a tear fallen there. He had never seen her cry. It was like another appeal to his tenderness —a new seduction. The girl glanced round, moved suddenly away, and averted her face. With her hand she signed imperiously to him to leave her alone—a command, which Heyst did not obey.